Please Pass the Guilt

This is the penultimate Nero Wolfe novel, published in 1975 when Stout was 87 years old, and it is a solid work of craftsmanship with all the familiar pleasures a Wolfe fan could desire, including a delightful bonus: Lieutenant Rowcliff finally gets what's coming to him. Stout throws in a few contem......more

The Nero Wolfe books are a sort of time machine. We start in the 1930s New York of the gangster era and have a great villain in Arnold Zeck. Then the 1940s are, of course, consumed by the war efforts and spies, etc. With the 1950s and 1960s comes communism as well as the push-back against McCarthyis......more

This is near the end of Stout's career and it shows as a solid entry into the Nero Wolfe lexicon. One point is that this story feels more modern than any other Nero Wolfe story. That felt a little awkward to me, possibly because I prefer the more old time style. Speaking of old time style one of the......more

4/5 A solidly fun mystery with just a bit of a rushed wrap-up.......more

Between 1934 and 1975, Rex Stout wrote 33 novels and 39 novellas featuring his fictional detective Nero Wolfe and Wolfe’s wise cracking assistant, Archie Goodwin. Reading one of his novels is like pulling an old, favored sweater out of your dresser drawer and putting it on. The sweater might be a li......more